By Sulaimon Olanrewaju
Contrary to expectations, President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday evening, called to congratulate the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, ahead of the final announcement of the result of the presidential election held last Saturday.
The gesture has taken the sail out of the wind of those who could have felt aggrieved enough by the result to throw the nation into chaos. By conceding defeat, President Jonathan has confirmed his pre-election position that his ambition was not worth the blood of any individual. The stand has been widely commended by Nigerians and the rest of the world as they praised the president for demonstrating the spirit of sportsmanship.
In her reaction to Jonathan’s concession of defeat, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, said, “President Goodluck Jonathan’s call to General Muhammadu Buhari is a solid statement of peace and democracy. Truly, the Africa we want.”
By suffering a defeat from the man whom he had subjected to the same fate in the same contest four years ago, President Jonathan has made history as the first sitting Nigerian president to lose an election. The president polled a total of 13.3m votes to his challenger’s 15.4m. The president won in 15 states and the FCT while Buhari won in 21 states. The election has been adjudged by local and international observers as largely free, fair and credible. The European Union had said on Monday in Abuja that its observers saw no evidence of systematic manipulations of the election.
The result, no doubt, must be shocking and devastating to the president considering that he had expressed so much optimism about winning the election. He had earlier in the month told Al-Jazeera cable television in an interview that though he was not desperate to hold on to power, there was no way he could lose the election. But as it turned out, he lost. However, in spite of Jonathan being a casualty of a transparent electoral system which he has engendered in the country, this could be his most enduring legacy.
Before Jonathan’s ascendancy to the presidency, elections in the country were a charade as the process was subjected to severe manipulation by the nation’s political leadership. Consequently, it was practically unthinkable that an incumbent president would be unseated. Though the people trooped out to vote, their votes hardly ever counted at the end of the day as the election management body, in cahoots with the political leadership, almost always declared results that were at variance with the expressed wish of voters. Consequently, most elections never ended with the declaration of the results as a number of candidates felt aggrieved enough to seek judicial redress.
Even the 2007 presidential election which brought both the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua and Jonathan to office as president and vice-president respectively was widely condemned by foreign and local observers. Yar’ Adua himself admitted, in June 2007, to Ban-Ki Moon, United Nations Secretary General, that the process through which he became the president of Nigeria was faulty.
According to the late president, “The April elections had flaws and shortcomings but it is significant that for the first time in our history, we had a civilian to civilian transfer of power.”
However, one of the first few things that Jonathan did on assumption of office was to assure Nigerians that he would institute a ‘one man, one vote’ electoral system. With that, he reorganised the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and appointed Professor Attahiru Jega, a man from the same region as his main challenger, as chairman.
Giving a background to why he was particular about instituting a transparent electoral process, President Goodluck Jonathan, referring to the 2007 election while receiving the report of the National Stakeholders Forum on Electoral Reform presented by former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, in April 2014, said, “Although we took oath of office and the Supreme Court declared us winners, each time one travelled abroad, people asked all kinds of questions that even got one angry. That was when I promised myself that if I had an opportunity to oversee elections in Nigeria, no other President or Vice President should suffer that can kind of harassment and embarrassment by the international community.”
He added, “That is why I said nobody should manipulate elections for me in the 2011 elections, though I was a candidate. My ambition and the fate of the country are two different things; the interest of the nation is superior to my ambition and I kept faith with that. At the end of the election, it was accepted by local and international observers. And I promise that 2015 elections would be better,” he said.
Similarly, while performing the dedication/hand-over ceremony of the All Saints Anglican Church, Mpu, in Aninri Local Government Area, built by the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu in April 2013, President Jonathan had said, “We should think more of our country, think more of building a society that our children will be happy about. I believe that no leader can do everything for the society but you think about some key things and do those ones very well.
“In this political dispensation, my feeling is to have free and fair elections. You cannot talk about good governance where election of people is manipulated. If your coming to power from councillorship to presidency is based on manipulation, then there is no good thing you can do there.
“My belief, first and foremost, is to make sure that our electoral processes are sanitized and that the votes of Nigerians count. What I can promise Nigerians is that with their prayers, we will succeed and we are committed to making those little changes that will make a difference.’’
Living up to his promise, President Jonathan has given INEC a free hand to conduct its affairs without any meddlesomeness from the executive. On April 2, 2011, President Jonathan had gone to the polling booth to exercise his franchise when he heard like all other Nigerians that Professor Jega had cancelled the Presidential/NASS election scheduled for that day due to logistics problem.
The President, in his reaction to this, said he was not consulted before the decision was taken, saying that INEC was exercising its power as the body in charge of elections in the country.
Even, in the run up to the March 28 election when there were agitations by some members of the PDP that Jega should be relieved of his duty because he was seen as not supporting the party, Jonathan refused to dance to their tune. He stuck to his gun and decided that Jega was going to complete his tenure.
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In a media chat on Wednesday, February 11, Jonathan had been asked if he would sack Jega. In his answer, he said he had no plan to remove Jega though he had the power to do so. He said for as long as the INEC chairman did not run foul of the rules of his engagement, he would not sack him.
He had added, “INEC is a very sensitive body. For me to change the INEC chairman, Nigerians and non-Nigerians will ask questions. So, you cannot wake up and change the INEC Chairman.”
To his credit, between 2011 and 2015, INEC conducted elections in Anambra, Edo, Ekiti and Osun states. The President’s party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lost in three of the elections but Jonathan was always quick to congratulate the winner. He never attempted to manipulate the process in favour of his party. This even set him against some leaders of the party who believed that the president should use his powers to the party’s advantage.
To further demonstrate his intention to submit himself to the will of the people as expressed through their votes, President Jonathan had said during the February media chat that he would concede if he lost the election.
According to him, “If the elections are conducted and I lose, of course, we will inaugurate a new government; there is no way I will say if I lose I will not hand over.”
Many Nigerians are of the view that Jonathan has been able to create an enabling environment for credible elections because of his level of political tolerance. Unlike what the country had been used to, under him the opposition was not muzzled. He allowed people with different political opinions to ventilate their views.
This has been construed as a weakness by some people but the general consensus among political analysts is that sustainable positive political culture can only thrive in an atmosphere of political tolerance, the kind mirrored by the outgoing president.
As President Goodluck Jonathan begins the preparation for his exit from Aso Villa and his return to Otuoke, the land of his birth in Bayelsa State, one of the things that should gladden his heart is his success in bequeathing to his fatherland what had been long lacking, a credible electoral process which affords the people to make a choice of their own leaders without let or hindrance. (Tribune)
